Amanda Knox’s $4m book deal is ‘dirty money’

A REPORTED $4m (£2.6m) advance paid to the American student Amanda Knox for her autobiography is “dirty money”, according to the former bar owner she falsely accused of murdering Meredith Kercher.

Patrick Lumumba, who owned the bar where Knox worked as a waitress, alleged that she slandered him to cover her own involvement in the 2007 killing of Kercher, an exchange student from Coulsdon, south London. Kercher was found almost naked with her throat cut in her cottage in the Italian town of Perugia.

Knox, 25, will publish Waiting to be Heard on April 30 in the United States, despite facing a new trial over Kercher’s murder. HarperCollins, its British publisher, said publication had been delayed in the UK on legal advice.